We're in for a wild covfefe! Still I am not sure that he was trying to write 'coverage'. Because I still think he knew exactly what he was writing. He wanted to covfefe and he tweeted it, clearly and proudly. Simple truth.

I mistype "lol" as "lop" and accidentally send it like 5 times a week.

Looking at my phone keyboard, I could see how a swipe-to-type could explain a "coverage" typo to covfefe. I just assume his tiny hands couldn't make it far enough.

If anyone sees this typo as some kind of "win" for them and "the resistance" or anything other than a silly little mistake, they are really... SAD

It's A Baby Shower Sort of Day

There are times when I just have to share. And I guess if you have been reading my blog then you know that I am the type of person that doesn't hold back when it comes to making a moment special. And what moment can be more special when, and this is in my opinion the biggest event that a person will ever experience, there is a birth in the family. In this case my immediate family.

Then it is time for a baby shower. Come hell or high water, there will be an amazing baby shower to celebrate. And I couldn't be personally more excited about the whole thing.

Jenny is and will always be my best friend. It just so happens that we are two days apart. I am older, but that doesn't much matter when the difference in age is so small. Anyway, she is and will always be my BFF. But I have already said that. It doesn't hurt to hammer it home though. Since this is the reason that I am so very excited about the up coming event. My daughter was born last June and now she will be getting company. Jenny and her husband Kyle are expecting a baby boy come July 1st. It will be by Cesarean which is why they have a date set already. Though if you have had children of your own you will know that they often set the dates as if our bodies are a factory with guaranteed output on a specific date. I gave birth via breach two weeks earlier than they had scheduled. I'm sorry, pregnancy, babies, and the like do not run on your schedule. She was a big baby 6lbs 4oz and healthy, what more could a couple want.

For Jenjen's baby shower I am going to take some pointers from mine. She wasn't able to attend my baby shower since, tears, she and Kyle were stranded in the Atlanta airport for 36 hours. It is a long story, and one that I am a little touchy about. Not because they could have avoided it, but because having her at the baby shower would have made the whole afternoon that much more perfect.

Not that my aunt's didn't do a great job. They did.

And in every way imaginable.

But because it was just missing that special something. That little bit of sisterhood that we have always given one another.

The and I celebrated a little private shower when she got back. It was also nice. So I really can't complain, too much.

Learning From My Baby Shower

I learned a lot about the shower, the way they are put together, and what I would have personally done differently had I planned it.

While it was great, I feel like some of the aspects were unbalanced.

My aunts got most of their supplies online. And I plan to do the same. They looked for vendors on The Bump and the other big baby sites and came up with a nice list. For example they got the cutest invitations on a site called Baby–Shower–Invites which I also plan to use.

And I am sure everyone that has ever had a baby shower can, and most likely will tell you, that they would change things. I feel like now is my chance to give Jenny the one that would make her the happiest.

If it had been done differently. Had she been the first from us to get pregnant and have a baby, I know in my hear that she would be making the same plans.

It is just how we are.

Jenny's Shower Party

One of the aspects that I would have loved to have by my baby shower is the gift opening. And while I understand that this is in fact one of the things that many women dread, it just would have given me a chance to say thank you in that much more personal and immediate way. It is sort of like being able to let them see how much you love what they gave you and the baby. And since your baby can't say thank you yet, it is a chance for you to do it for them.

I tend to get emotional, this is the main reason why my aunts left this out. They didn't want me blubbering around the room giving people hugs.

And I can agree on that level.

But it just feels like it was missing. And since Jenny isn't the type that will be doing said sentimental hugging the gift opening is on the program.

For any of you that will be hosting a baby shower yourselves, here is what I have come up with.

My Baby Shower Program:

Welcome guests

Help them prepare for the party (and sign up for the raffle)

First refreshments (fruit cocktails and snacks)

Shower games (first set: anything fun and silly to break the ice)

Coffee and cake (this is a chance to visit and catch up)

Gift opening (this is also a chance to digest the food)

Shower games (second set: more fun and silly, but also bigger prizes)

Draw winners for raffle

The end

I am thinking this will take about four and a half to five hours. I don't want the shower to draw on too long, after all half of the women are pregnant themselves and nobody wants to sit around for hours.

Like this there won't be a lot of slow periods where things get dull.

Keeping It Interesting

As you can see from my program I want the baby shower to be fast paced. I have tried to pace the activities so that they are equally spread out for the more active activities and then the visiting/eating portions of the party. I can't take all of the credit for this. Much of the flow is from my aunt Teresa who works at the county surveyors office and she keeps everything running smooth with she skills with the spread sheet. Which she actually gave me after my shower. I was a lot more complicated, everything was in its own color coordinated

Section with details about the whole thing.

I simplified my plans. And added in the gift opening ceremony.

Keeping It Simple

Unlike my aunt, I am not that organized. I tend to make rough plans, I have a page of notes written out for Jen's baby shower and then I will just go from there. I feel like if you make it too complicated you will just end up forgetting things and like this the celebration has the chance to go at its own flow. Which will make the entire day more personable in my opinion.

Also simple has another benefit, when I keep things simple I have less chance to mess things up.

And while it might sound like the type of person to keep things sane, I am unfortunately not. If I am not careful I will let things get out of hand. And that isn't good. When that happens I will get hooked up on making it bigger instead of making it better.

This is something that I have had to face again and again until I learned that simple if most definitely my friend.

I actually didnt have a strong musical preference in film music until I started listening to his music, and then eventually his station on Pandora, which led me to like other types of instrumental music and then other genres of music like rock. I credit Zimmer for my love of film socres, he is amazing.

His music for Interstellar is breath taking. The Gladiator Soundtrack does that for me, as well.

That whole sequence on the water planet is just stunning.

Through most of this piece there is a single note played at a regular interval, indicating time on earth. The right hand starts at this timing then slowly speeds up, indicating the time dilation sensed on the ship as it has left earth. Then it goes batshit before it comes back to sync with the original timing.

While I agree that learning to read music is a life skill that is transferable, if you get too bogged down in learning music without actually playing an instrument, then you'll quickly burn out on the entire thing.

There's something to be said for learning an instrument by repetition while at the same time learning the music that complements it. It gives you that drive to continue, while also helps you slowly pick up music.

Most film music is heavily inspired by late 19th century composers. Dvorak, Rachmaninov, even Brahms. This particular music reminds me a lot of Chopin's raindrop prelude in d flat. The way Zimmer uses that constant E throughout the piece is very reminiscent of Chopin's constant A-flat. After the 'A' section (or exposition, whatever you want to call it) Chopin repurposes the A flat into G sharp and modulates to G sharp minor, a huge distance from d flat major in key relationships. It's pretty amazing.

My personal favorite is Beethoven's Sonata No. 31 in A flat Major Op. 110. Beethoven put a lot into this piece, the the beautiful and flowing opening theme, the powerful and uplifting second movement, and the soul-crushingly melancholic third movement.

Beethoven could do so much with so little, his melodies were so simple a child could have scribbled them down, yet he was able to write some of the most powerful music ever written.

Great piece by a great composer.

The there is Liszt - Chasse-Neige.

It captures a sense of desperation that anyone who has been in pain can understand. It suggests an image of someone trudging through a blizzard, in agony from the cold, with no hope of ever reaching a warm home, but even within that terrible situation they see small moments of beauty within the whirl of snowflakes - but ultimately they fall and die.

There's something about the fact that it is the last of the Transcendental Etudes, that the pianist has to play when they are most exhausted, and it's one of the most difficult ones, adds to the poignancy, for me anyway.

My clear nylon 0.040 'B' string recently broke. When I purchased my harp a few years ago, I also bought a full string set on the Sylvia Woods website. The full set only comes with one clear 0.040 string, and unfortunately, I broke it while bringing it up to tune. (It was my first time trying to change a string.) :(

I was looking to find a replacement, and have discovered that Sylvia Woods no longer sells single strings, or even full sets for the grand harpsicle. The Harpsicle website does sell strings for the grand, but they only sell full sets (and I only need one string!) for $165.00! I can't believe how much the prices have increased in just a couple years.

Is there anywhere online that I can buy the single string I need?

Leave a comment if you have any ideas. Any help would be much appreciated!

EDIT: Apparently I didn't have a way for you to comment on the blog. But a nice reader named Helen emailed me. She said I should contact Sylvia directly. Which is what I did. For anyone looking... I emailed Sylvia Woods and evidently she DOES still sell full sets for the Grand Harpsicle. :) I ended up finding single nylon strings on the Dusty Strings website. But thank you to everyone who chimed in with some sources. I will keep them bookmarked for the future!

I have several thousand pieces of sheet music, and who knows how many pages. I have it three-hole punched and organized in individual hard-backed binders by composer, then for composers that I have less music for e. g. Couperin, I have it organized by Period / Style. This is all cataloged in a searchable spreadsheet, organized in order as they appear on my bookcase, and I have a printed out copy of it.

It actually never occurred to me that this isn't entirely common but almost ALL of my sheet music is loose because it's copies from books, or printed from the computer, or just randomly found from somewhere. I own quite a few books as well but I don't typically purchase books for heavy use, more just to bolster my music library. Anyway, I use binders. I have something like 18 of them right now, although that's partially because I use smaller ones because they're less likely to break. Everything that goes into them is in page protectors so I have lots of those as well.

They're not randomly tossed into the binders. For some composers, I have so much stuff by them that I use one binder for everything from that composer.

I also have four binders for everything I've composed. I keep everything from the choirs I sing with separate from everything else, so those are in their own binders.

The rest of the binders are alphabetized by composer. In addition to my binders and all my books, I do also have a file cabinet of music which I keep organized by composer as well. It's filled with everything that I don't really touch. Either it's old stuff that I've kinda let go of, or stuff that I printed out/got but never got around to because I didn't care enough. So that's kinda my "storage". I ALSO have all of my pdfs on my computer very nicely organized by composer in folders. It's all in one place, labeled the same way, easy to search and print. So that's an extensive collection as well. As far as LABELING all of these things, my binders have labels on the cover so I know what the binder contains and like I said, they're alphabetized on the inside. My file cabinet has every composer labeled with, well. a label.

Easy to see. And my computer has everything labeled by composer as well.

I played harp from ages 10 to about 13, and then the family moved and the harp I was using went back to my school. 15 years later, I am thinking about taking the instrument back up. I have been a pianist for as long as I can remember, but I miss the harp. I was thinking of starting with a lever harp as the budget is no where close to affording a pedal harp (and I wouldn't want to make that kind of investment out-of-the-gate anyway).

I was thinking about purchasing a Merlin from R-Harps. From what I understand, it's a good harp for the money.

Any thoughts on R-Harps and/or re-learning the instrument? Also, I have seen some books and a few names to search on YouTube around this sub-reddit, I will certainly seek those out, but any advice would be appreciated.

Many harp sellers have rent-to-purchase options, so that would probably be worth looking into.

Teachers also often have instruments for students to rent and can advise on which harp would be best for you, which is a good idea since they're such a hefty investment. There's also huge variation in sound among lever harps -- mine is enormous and pretends to be a pedal harp, it gets a deep, full sound -- so it's advisable to try out lots of different harps from different makers, if possible.

There's no single answer, but this will always have to be in the discussion.

If you're into jazz at all, I'd check out some versions of "I Fall In Love Too Easily" (here is one by Keith Jarrett) and "My Foolish Heart" (Bill Evans' specifically).

In the classical world, I personally love Chopin's Nocturne in E minor, his Nocturne in C-sharp minor, and his Prelude in E minor. Debussy's Arabesque No. 1 is also one of my favorites. I'd also add Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, specifically this one.

I realize that this is way more than one song.

Moonlight Sonata for me. Heard it for the first time when I was in elementary school and spent years trying to find out the name/composer.

But they're all beautiful so why not.

My aunt who is a retired opera singer always tells me about how my grandmother used to play it as her encore during her concert tours in Europe. I always get the same question when the subject of my piano playing comes up: "Do you know La Campanella already?". Apparently I am nothing until I can play that flawlessly.